The last couple weeks have cranked out a lot of color across the bow. Fall has really provided extraordinary brilliance. It wasn't what I expected given the long stretches of dry weather we have had. Just goes to show, even the least well informed make mistakes now and then.
So this week I switched off the color shtick and went monochromatic to late evening with fog on the footbridge. This image gets back to my roots of black and white which I truly miss. Without color, to me, the black and white image engages the viewer differently, allowing the eyes and brain to participate more personally. All the information is not given — it goes to a different place in the brain — your place.
This photo reminds me of all the unique ways our special home presents itself, changing daily, sometimes hourly, giving us different views of the familiar. Black and white photos have always done that for me.
Even though this is really a color image, made with a digital camera, unchanged by employing the buttons of Photoshop, it is stripped of the vibrant color we all know exists. The beauty, for me, is that everyone can add their own “vision,” making it, a more personal interpretation.
How many times have we all, viewed, walked, heard and smelled the “footbridge” — yet we don't see it in the many ways it exists. It is such a landmark structure we have all absorbed — we don't really see it anymore, yet many of us see it everyday.
In my mind, such as it is, that's one of the wonderful things about black and white photography. Because most of us can't see things as black and white, we are forced to add our own color, giving special meaning to a common scene.